A statewide survey has found that nearly a quarter of Colorado motorists admit to reading a text message, e-mail or social media post on their cellphone while driving, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

CDOT says 15 percent of people also admitted to writing a message on their electronic device while behind the wheel in the week before completing the survey. Another 62 percent of people reported “at least sometimes” using an iPod, CD player, radio or other device while driving in the week before the survey.

“We’ve kind of seen the limit of taking dangerous intersections out and putting in grade-separated crossings or adding clear zones,” CDOT executive director Shailen Bhatt told reporters in January . “We can engineer the system as well as we can. But the behavioral stuff is not something that we can move the needle on drastically, except for our education programs.”

At least 605 people died on Colorado’s roadways in 2016, including an all-time high 125 motorcyclists and a 15-year high 84 pedestrians and 16 bicyclists. The overall number of deaths is an 11 percent increase over 2015, when 547 people died on the state’s roadways.

The CDOT survey also found that nearly 40 percent of adult drinkers drove within two hours of consuming alcohol and that pickup truck drivers are less likely to wear seatbelts, especially on local roads. The information was compiled from 845 surveys mailed to Colorado residents in November by CDOT.

Steve Nehf, The Denver Post

The Colorado State Patrol investigates a fatal one-car crash near Washington St. and 64th Ave. on Jan 31, 2017. CDOT’s director called the spike of fatalities last year on an “epidemic of distracted driving.”

CDOT says the survey found, too, that the number of people who drive over the speed limit is increasing; 69 percent admitted to speeding in the 2016 survey, up from 65 percent in 2014.

Another 45 percent of Coloradans said they sped some of the time and 24 percent sped all or most of the time.

“This survey provides us with a good but disturbing snapshot of what is actually happening on Colorado roadways,” Darrell Lingk, director of the office of transportation safety at CDOT, said in a statement. “It will help us design and implement our traffic safety campaigns to address these dangerous behaviors.”

Politics reporter. He has worked at The Denver Post since the summer of 2014, covering cops, courts, politics, environment, skiing and everything in between. He loves telling stories about Colorado's mountain towns and the Eastern Plains and wants to make sure our newspaper's great work extends into their communities.

The University of Colorado leadership is grappling with how to address a nationwide nosedive in the favorability of higher education — particularly, among conservatives — as CU’s own representatives and decision-makers disagree on what’s behind the downturn.